Awareness campaign targets hiring child maids

2007-01-23

A nationwide campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of hiring child maids was launched in several Moroccan cities. The campaign is part of the Childhood National Action Plan adopted by the government last year.

By Sarah Touahri for Magharebia in Rabat –23/01/07

[Sarah Touahri] Yasmina Baddou (centre) speaks at the launch of the awareness campaign.

A month-long nationwide awareness campaign to prevent the employment of child maids has been launched in Morocco, part of a national project to raise awareness about the phenomenon.

"We hope that this campaign will raise public awareness of the dangers of this social problem, which is denying several thousand girls of their human rights and jeopardising them and their futures," Yasmina Baddou, the secretary of state for the Family, Childhood and the Disabled, told reporters on Friday (January19th) in Rabat.

Baddou said the campaign marks the beginning of project Inqad, which is part of the Childhood National Action Plan adopted by the government last year.

The campaign, which runs from Monday through February 23rd, will feature a series of radio and television awareness and information spots. Discussion forums with a wide range of information materials targeted at people who employ child maids will be held in each of the four regions covered by the project -- Casablanca, Rabat, Fes and Marrakech. A publicity caravan will roam in the target cities, distributing awareness materials to families who employ child maids and families considered likely to contract their daughters to do domestic work.

It is difficult to estimate how prevalent the phenomenon is in Morocco since it happens within families, and there is a severe lack of statistical data on the employment of child maids. Human Rights Watch says there may be as many as 66,000 in Morocco. A study carried out in the Grand Casablanca region put the number of child maids in the city at 25,000.

The Inqad project aims to close the legal loophole in regards to employment of child maids. Current employment laws stipulate that children cannot be employed until they are 15. Although the employment of minors in work potentially hazardous to their health or lives is illegal, there are no established penalties for failure to comply. A new bill is being drafted to close these gaps in the law.

Prevention is therefore one of the main elements of the Inqad programme, which is intended to tackle the causes of the phenomenon. It will also target the network of intermediaries and encourage families in rural areas to send their daughters to school.

Sociologist Mohamed Bouchtaoui says there are many social and economic reasons for the phenomenon. "First of all there’s poverty and significant school drop-out rates in rural areas, which supplies the labour market with workers. Culture also plays a part -- a lot of families still favour sexist practices. Girls traditionally feel that they have to take care of the housework. The third factor is the legal loophole -- there is still no law on domestic work."

Rkia Badie, 10, has been working in a house in Temara for six months. Although she says she is happy with the way her employers treat her, she says that she misses her family: "I would have liked to carry on studying at home with my family, but I have to help my parents."